Why You Love Games

hy do we play video games? What is it about this relatively new form of interactive entertainment that manages to occupy so much of our time? Was there ever a time in our lives where we fell out of love with games, only to come back years later and rekindle the relationship? For many of us, it was love at first sight from the moment we first laid our paws onto a controller. For others, it took a very specific experience to finally make us realize that this was the medium for us. While we all have our own specific reasons, we here at 1UP were particularly interested in hearing back from the community on why they do what they do. Here's how they responded.

I have been playing games since I was young, but there was a time during high school and early in college that I just sort of didn't play them as much. Other hobbies kind of took over my time during those years. There are a couple of games I always credit for changing me from the guy who at that time played a few games a year into the one that plays many more and also follows all the news and writes about them online. The games I'm talking about are Jak 3 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Both were platformers, but Jak 3 had all these varied gameplay types and SoT was very much an action/adventure game as well. And these helped push me towards trying more games than just my typical platformer and sports games of the time. From this point on, gaming became a much bigger deal to me. So not only do Jak 3 and Sands of Time stand as two of my all-time favorites because they are excellent games, but also because they helped to reignite my love of games that just hadn't been quite the same for a while.

I replayed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a lot after I first beat it. I am talking about beating the game at least once a month for well over a year. I always loved watching something a second time and catching a joke or reference I missed before. Knights of the Old Republic, brought this to a new extreme. Even without its moral choices and different classes, it would still find ways to make replaying worth it.

My favorite of them was being the arbiter (read: lawyer) to a republic soldier named Sunry for being accused of murder. The first time, I did a terrible job and he was sentenced to execution. After that, I was able to save him. It was not until I was on my seventh playthrough, however, that I decided to go to a Republic base during his mission. It was there I found a recording of him murdering the victim. It let me catch something in a way only a videogame could do. It was not the only example of this. To discover something new that changes the outcome of a story is one of the many reasons I love video games.

I love games for one simple reason: they take me to places far away from the real world. Sure, they're fun, and thrilling, and intellectually captivating, but what I really want is to be taken away to far off places unlike everything I've ever known. I remember playing Sega Genesis sidescrollers back when I was a kid, and staring with longing at the 2D backgrounds of sparkling cities and remote villages, wondering, "What kind of place is that? What kind of people live there? What are their stories?" Whether it was Sonic the Hedgehog or Last Battle, I always wanted to disappear into these worlds.

With the advance of technology, we've gotten closer to actually travelling to these worlds: instead of just smashing goombas in Super Mario Bros, now you can talk to them in Sticker Star or The Thousand Year Door, and find they are creatures with their own personalities. As AI progresses, this will get even more exciting.

But it was always the worlds of Final Fantasy that captured my imagination most; in Final Fantasy VII's decaying world or the tragic waters of Final Fantasy X. These characters become so real, and their homes become so diverse, that it was hard not to be carried away. And that's what I like, to be carried away.

I think it's really hard to qualify why people love playing games so much in basic terms like "I do it because of this," or "I love it because of that," until very recently. Up until a few years ago, I played games because it's just what I did; I discovered playing them as a young child and continued (with a very brief hiatus in college) all the way through adulthood. Did I "love" them? Sure, but it was just the pastime I preferred above other things like watching movies or playing sports. Granted, it was a preference that I took very seriously, but still just something I took enjoyment in sort of part-time. Then I got diagnosed with lymphoma.

Cancer, no matter what type you can have, is sort of a physically passive experience. The adage that it's 90% mental is completely true, because you either go to get treatment or you wind up like Warren Zevon and refuse it. How you participate in the emotional and mental difficulty is the real challenge. The people you gather around you and the support you are gifted from them are a large part of how you can deal with the treatment, but not the only way. Eventually, a patient has to figure out on their own how to deal with themselves, as strange as that sounds, and this is especially frustrating deeper into chemotherapy and/or radiation when you're body doesn't behave like you want it to. For whatever reason, during the early stages of chemo, I started my second playthrough of Demon's Souls, and it became my coping mechanism.

My first trip through DS was very difficult; the game was still new so there wasn't a lot of wiki information on the internet yet, and knowing how punishing the game was, I felt that I wanted to handle it myself like a big boy (no co-op, no walkthroughs). This was a huge mistake, but it was a good learning experience. Subconsciously, I looked at the game during a particularly dark period of my life as a complex, almost abstract problem that I knew that I could overcome, and that spoke to me. I spent months playing it, especially on weekends in my post-chemo malaise, with multiple runs and character builds because I wanted to break the game over my knee and show it what's what. I know that sounds like an absurd metaphor, but that's exactly what happened.

I've been playing games a long time, and I suppose I could tell you how much I loved the NES Ninja Gaiden as a kid or my profound experiences with Phantasy Star II. But that's not love, that's enjoyment. I love video games because they were there for me when I needed them, I guess. That's as a good a reason as any.

"Why do you play with video games?" A question many of us hear a lot. To many, video games seem like a waste of time, something that children do, and eventually grow out of. To those I respond with "Why do you watch movies, listen to music, and read a book?" We all spend our time getting lost in various types of media, and video games are no different.

After a day at work, nothing beats sitting down, and getting lost in various fantasy worlds where you can save the princess, lead your favorite team to a championship, or flinging round birds into poorly constructed shelters. A lot of the same aspects that we enjoy in other forms of media, we enjoy in video games. I play video games as an escape from the everyday world. For an hour or so a day, I can be the little plumber looking for the princess, lead a team to the Super Bowl, or slingshot round birds at green pigs. This is why I play video games.

Games have been my comfort food sometimes. Even though the more emotionally busy times of my life are when I play games the least, they're always something I keep in my company. I've had love (and love lost) glue itself to some of my gaming experiences, for better or worse, depending on the relationship or the lingering residuals.

The way songs or lyrics can remind you of someone, strike a nerve or hit a soft spot, games were sometimes the background noise to my life. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, to me, will forever be the game that got me through a breakup in 2005. I was drunk driving in pimped out lowriders, banging hookers, living life like a straight up G, and keeping it MOB for a good couple of weeks. It was like that buddy who'll take you out, buy you a pitcher, and tell you she's not worth it.

I'm a huge '90s hip-hop head and I remember that game the way I remember the late, great Nate Dogg. Who knows how my rebound would have gone if I'd chosen to take the much heavier MGS3 off my back burner instead? Betrayal, blondes, tearjerkers, and trying to aim...I doubt it would have went well.

It's a simple question to ask, really. Why do I love games? Why haven't I finally "grown up" and turned in my Peter Pan duds and my pixie dust? By now gaming is akin to an unsightly scar I'm proud of. Sure, not every lady or fellow I come across is going to be wooed and taken in by it yet I can still make up a ridiculous number of absurd stories about how I got it and why it makes me that much more interesting as a person!

Games serve many purposes for me. There are instances they provide me with inspiration for my own ideas. When situations in my life were sad or frustrating games were my key outlets for self therapy and healthy escapism. Lastly, I love games because they gave me something to talk about with other people. If not for gaming I never would have visited 1UP and I never would have befriended so many wonderful people! Strange as it is to acknowledge, games have aided me in coming out of my shell. For all the talks about gamers being shut-ins and basement dwellers it's ironic that I'm the contrasting opposite polarity of the usual stereotype. Put simply, games made me more social. Furthermore, I do not believe I'm the only one experiencing this phenomenon!

As much as I joke about "the gaming underground" and how today's generation doesn't know what it is to be "hardcore," I'm glad gamers are more accepted today than they were during my high school years. I don't believe anyone should be ashamed of being a gamer so long as they're good people overall. Gaming is something we do but regardless of the games we play the actual hobby doesn't always define who we are. Even the media is catching on to this very fact and it is a progressive push forward for all of us!

Comments (7)

lousy day at work

Endorphins

Great answers. Gaming is one of the few pastimes that is both passive/relaxing, but also makes you feel like you've accomplished something impressive. I feel a sense of accomplishment when I win a match of CoD or earn a secret achievement in ACIII. It's not only the reward-feedback games themselves provide, but the actual skill it takes to do well. There is no inherent skill or pride in something like watching a TV show. That's why gaming, as a hobby, should be more closely associated to sports than watching TV. Obviously not physically, but in the rush and sense of worth games can provide, as well as their skill requirement.

Because...

When you're climbing a clocktower of spinning gears and the screen is full of medusa heads and you can't fall whatever you do because that means instant death and you manage at last to make it to the top (after jumping across some swinging pendulums) and the boss appears and you only have a quarter of your health and your jumping around like a mad man and some how you manage to dodge most of the attacks and your whip is flying and axes are arcing through the air to rain down like terrible justice upon your foes and just when it looks like all your efforts were for naught - when you have only one bar left - you strike the fatal blow and the boss explodes in flames and that red orb falls from the sky - yes THEN, when that happens, you feel so good.